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POWER

.
.

see: "AUTHORITY"
see: "FORCE"
see: "STRENGTH", "STRENGTH & WEAKNESS"
see "POLITICS" for other related links


-

Power tends to corrupt and absolute
power corrupts absolutely.
--Lord Acton (1834-1902)
British historian.
Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton [3 April 1887] (published 1904).

& see:

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
--John Lehman (1942- )
American investment banker and writer who served as
Secretary of the Navy [1981-1987].

-

Cleisthenes enacted new ones [laws] with the aim
of winning the people's favor. Among these was
the law about ostracism.
--Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.
_Constitution of Athens_,
In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004].
Cohan & Major note that:
Ostracism involved exiling any citizen who appeared to
the people to be too powerful and a potential threat to
the constitution. The citizens wrote names on a potsherd
(ostrakon). Whoever received the greatest number of votes
and not fewer than 6,000 had to settle his private affairs within
ten days and leave the city for ten years. It did not involve
disgrace or loss of property, and during the Persian Wars in
the first half of the 5th century those who had been ostracized
were recalled to help the city.

Knowledge is power.
[Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.]
--Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
English philosopher and essayist.
_Meditationes Sacrae_ [1597] "De Haersibus"

Every dictator uses religion as a prop
to keep himself in power.
--Benazir Bhutto (1953- )
Pakistani stateswoman.
Interview on "60 Minutes" {TV show} [8 August 1986].

Power to the people.
--slogan of the Black Panthers

The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the
armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the
hosts of Error.
--William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
American Democratic and Populist politician
who ran for the presidency three times.
without success.
Speech at the National Democratic Convention,
Chicago, Illinois [1896].

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.
--Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
British novelist and politician.
_Richelieu_ [1839], act II, sc. ii

Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history
have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the
truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart
and the understanding.
--Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters.

A power has risen up in the government greater than the people
themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests,
combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power
of the vast surplus in the banks.
--John C. Calhoun (1782-1850)
{American political leader who was U.S. congressman,
secretary of war, vice president [1825-1832], senator,
and secretary of state. He championed states' rights.
and slavery and was a symbol of the Old South. - EB}
Speech [27 May 1836].

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is
to be master--that's all.'
--Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832-1898)
English writer and logician.
_Thorough the Looking-Glass_ [1872]

The arts of power and its minions are the same in
all countries and in all ages; it marks its victim;
denounces him; and excites the public odium and
the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and
encroachments.
--Henry Clay (1777-1852)
American politician.

-

Power multiplies flatterers, and flatterers multiply
our delusions by hiding us from ourselves.
--C.C. Colton (1780-1832)
English clergyman and writer.


Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice
makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as
a mean to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate
it as an end.
--C.C. Colton (1780-1832)
English clergyman and writer.


It was observed of [Queen] Elizabeth that she was
weak herself, but chose wise counsellors; to which
it was replied, that to choose wise counsellors was,
in a prince, the highest wisdom.
--C.C. Colton (1780-1832)
English clergyman and writer.

-

Nature has left this tincture in the blood,
That all men would be tyrants if they could.
--Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
English novelist and journalist.
_The History of the Kentish Petition_ [1712-1713]

[Americans] no sooner set up an idol firmly than [they] are sure
to pull it down and dash it into fragments. ... Any man, who
attains a high place among you, from the President downward,
may date his downfall from that moment.
--Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
English novelist.
{In the 1840s.}

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did,
and it never will. Find out just what people will submit
to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed upon them,; and these
will continue till they have resisted with wither words
or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.
--Frederick Douglass [Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey]
(c.1818-1895)
American abolitionist, reformer, and writer.
Speech in Canandaigua, New York [3 August 1857]
"The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies."

^

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
American general and statesman, 34th
President of the United States [1953-1961].


Some months after the end of his term as President,
Eisenhower was asked if leaving the White House
had affected his golf game. 'Yes,' he replied, 'a lot
more people beat me now.'

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and André Bernard [2000 ed.]

^

England, an old and exhausted island, must one day be
contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her
children.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
American philosopher and poet.

Who is wise? He that learns from everyone.
Who is powerful? He that governs his Passions.
Who is rich? He that is content.
Who is that? Nobody.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.
_Poor Richard's Almanack_ [July 1755]

^^

How much power does the president actually have? Enormous power. In
foreign affairs, he is basically an elected four-year dictator. Especially since the
beginnings of the cold war, at the end of the Second World War, the president
and his minions have presided over a vast, secret, shadow government - a kind
of state within a state. Partly because of the foul seeds sown in the struggle
against communism, a monstrous, bloated structure arose, deep in the bowels
of a democratic society: a national security and intelligence apparatus, including
the CIA and its covert operations, all of this virtually unchecked and unbalanced,
with vast sums of money at its disposal. The public never saw it, never wanted
to see it; Congress dished out the money (hidden in various nooks and crannies
of the budget) and either blinded itself or was co-opted or approved or did not
care. All of this underground government answers, in theory, to the president.
The practice is no doubt more complex.

Congress, under the Constitution, has the power to declare war - the presdent
does not. But this is now only theory. The president, in fact, now always fires
the first shot. In the second half of the twentieth century, he was the one
who declared the wars; he decided on war or peace. In 1950 the North Koreans
crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea. This was a major crisis, and the
president, Harry S. Truman, responded to it - vigorously and immediately.
What followed was a real war, and a bloody one; real people died; real armies
clashed; but Congress never "declared" it a war. Since then, the United States
has deployed armies many times - in Vietnam, in Grenada, in the Persian Gulf,
in Yugoslavia. Never once has Congress made the first move; never has it voted
to declare a war. President Kennedy backed an ill-fated invasion of Cuba, which
came to grief at the Bay of Pigs. This was only the most notorious of many
actions which a whole series of presidents planned, connived at, or arranged
during the cold war - a whole series of dirty, covert, warlike moves, many of
which amounted (legally) to acts of war. Congress did enact a War Powers
Resolution in 1973, insisting that the president had to "consult with Congress,"
if at all possible, before sending troops "into hostilities." But this is mostly
sound and fury, signifying nothing. For the most part, in foreign affairs both
Congress and the public accept the imperial presidency.

Of course, even dictators take public opinion into account; and presidents
certainly do. In this country what people think and feel and want can be a
powerful restraint on the president's power. It matters what people say on the
street, in barber shops, in town meetings, and in letters to the editor. Sit-ins,
riots, demonstrations, and other acts of civil disobedience also matter. It was
public opinion, not law, that brought down President Lyndon Johnson and
ended the war in Vietnam. The formal law was toothless and unavailing.

The president, in domestic affairs, is extraordinarily powerful, too; but he
is definitely not above the law. An instructive instance was the famous steel
seizure case. The president was the same Harry Truman who took the country
into the Korean War - a move few people really questioned. In 1951, in the
midst of this war, steel companies and their unions locked horns over a work
contract. Attempts to mediate the controversy failed. In April 1952 the United
Steelworkers announced an intention to strike. The president ordered the
secretary of commerce to seize the steel mills. Management was told to keep
the mills going, under presidential rule. Truman told Congress what he had
done. Congress did nothing one way or another.

The steel industry now went to court. No statute authorized the president
to seize steel mills. But a war was going on - an undeclared one, to be sure.
Truman insisted that his authority to carry on the war gave him inherent power
to act as he had. Six justices of the Supreme Court disagreed. Truman had
overstepped the bounds. Only Congress could have ordered or authorized the
seizure; and Congress had specifically refused. A generation later, in United
States v. Nixon (1974), in the midst of the Watergate scandal, the Supreme
Court again solemnly (and this time unanimously) declared that the president
was not above the law. The president had to answer a subpoena demanding
that he release certain tape-recordings of conversations in his office. And in the
case of Paula Jones, the Supreme Court (again unanimously) allowed a lawsuit
against President Clinton (for sexual harassment) to proceed. The incident had
happened long before Clinton became president. A sitting president, said the
Court, has to answer for claims, so long as they do not arise out of his official
conduct.

America can be proud of these cases, of course. Nobody is above the law,
not even the man in the White House, the man with his finger on the atomic
button, the man with the red telephone, the leader of the free world. These
cases were a ringing endorsement of the rule of law.

--Lawrence M. Friedman (1930- )
_American Law in the 20th Century_ [2002]
Ch. 20 "Taking Stock" pp. 599-601

^^

If you can write a nation's stories, you needn't
worry about who makes its laws.
--George Gerbner (1919-2005)
American professor of mass communication.
_Bill Moyers' Journal_ "TV or Not TV" [23 April 1979]

-

Once upon a time our traditional goal in war--and can
anyone doubt that we are at war?--was victory. Once
upon a time we were proud of our strength, our military
power. Now we seem ashamed of it. Once upon a time
the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. Now
they look to us for a quick handout and a fence-straddling
international posture.
--Barry Goldwater (1909-1998)
American conservative politician.
_Why Not Victory?_ [1962]


Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take
your liberty in return for relieving you of yours,
those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen,
must see ultimately a world in which earthly power
can be substituted for divine will. And this nation
was founded upon the rejection of that notion and
upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.
--Barry Goldwater (1909-1998)
American conservative politician.
Speech to the Republican National Convention [16 June 1964].

-

...The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave....
--Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
English poet.
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"

The love of liberty is the love of others; the
love of power is the love of ourselves.
--William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist.

The West is overwhelmingly dominant now and
will remain number one in terms of power and
influence well into the twenty-first century. Gradual,
inexorable, and fundamental changes, however,
are also occurring in the balances of power among
civilizations, and the power of the West relative to
that of other civilizations will continue to decline ...
The most significant increases in power are accruing
and will continue to accrue to Asian civilizations,
with China gradually emerging as the society most
likely to challenge the West for global influence.
These shifts in power among civilizations are leading
and will lead to the revival and increased cultural
assertiveness of non-Western societies and to
their increasing rejection of Western culture.
--Samuel Huntington (1927- )
American political scientist.
_Clash of Civilizations_ [1996] pp. 82-83.

History reveals the Church and the State as a pair of
indispensable Molochs. They protect their worshiping
subjects, only to enslave and destroy them.
--Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
English novelist {grandson of T.H. Huxley}.
_Themes and Variations_ [1950],
"Variations on a Philosopher"

There is no king, who, with a sufficient force, is not
always ready to make himself absolute.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
American statesman and president [1801-1809].
Letter to George Wythe [13 August 1786].

Nature has given women so much power that
the law has very wisely given them little.
--Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where
power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is
the shadow of the other.
--Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
Swiss psychologist.
_The Psychology of the Unconscious_ [1943]

Power is the great aphrodisiac.
--Henry Alfred Kissinger (1923- )
German-born American diplomat.
In "The New York Times" [19 January 1971].

Power not only corrupts he who wields the power
but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at
the feet of power betray their fellows to hide
themselves behind the cloak of submission. It
is an evil thing.
--Louis L'Amour [Louis Dearborn LaMoore] (1908-1988)
American author of Western fiction.
_The Haunted Mesa_

-

I claim not to have controlled events,
but confess plainly that events have
controlled me.
--Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
American Republican statesman, President [1861-1865].
Letter to A.G. Hodges [4 April 1864].


Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you
want to test a man's character, give him power.
--Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
American Republican statesman, President [1861-1865].

-

May the Force be with you!
--George Lucas (1944- )
American screenwriter and producer.
_Star Wars_ [1977] (screenplay)

-

It is not titles that honor men, but
men that honor titles.
--Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Florentine statesman and political philosopher.


Since love and fear can hardly exist together,
if we must choose between them, it is far
safer to be feared than loved.
--Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Florentine statesman and political philosopher.
_The Prince_ [written 1513] ch. 8

-

Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political
power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'
--Mao Zedong (1893-1976)
Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who
led his nation's communist revolution.
Speech [6 November 1938].

The sole end for which mankind are warranted,
individually or collectively, in interfering
with the liberty of actions of any of their
number, is self protection. The only purpose
for which power can be rightfully exercised
over any member of a civilized community,
against his will is to prevent harm to others.
His own good, either physical or moral, is not
a sufficient warrant.
--John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
English philosopher and social reformer.
_On Liberty_ [1859]

A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of
advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations.
Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared
than a thousand bayonets.
--Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Emperor of France [1804-1815].

It is unfortunately none too well understood that,
just as the State has no money of its own, so it
has no power of its own. All the power it has is
what society [the people] gives it, plus what it
confiscates from time to time on one pretext or
another; there is no other source from which State
power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of
State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves
society with so much less power; there is never,
nor can be, any strengthening of State power without
a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion
of social power.
--Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945)
American libertarian author and social critic.

The power of the press is very great, but
not so great as the power of suppress.
--Lord Northcliffe (1865-1922)
British newspaper proprietor.
Office message "Daily Mail" [1918],
in Reginald Rose & Geoffrey Harmsworth _Northcliffe_ [1959].

-

Who controls the past controls the future:
who controls the present controls the past.
--George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903-1950)
English novelist.
_Nineteen Eighty-Four_ [1949]


Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a
dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes
the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The
object of persecution is persecution. The object of
torture is torture. The object of power is power.
--George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903-1950)
English novelist.
_Nineteen Eighty-Four_ [1949], pt. III, ch. 3

-

Those who voluntarily put power into the hand of a tyrant or
an enemy, must not wonder if it be at last turned against
themselves.
--Gaius Julius Phaedrus (c. 15 B.C. - c. 50 A.D.)
The versifier of Aesop's Fables in Latin.
_Fables_ v. I, no. 31 "The Kite and the Pigeons"

Necessity is the plea for every infringement
of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants;
it is the creed of slaves.
--William Pitt, the Younger, (1759-1806)
British prime minister [1783-1801, 1804-1806]
during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.
Speech in the House of Commons [18 November 1783].

Once a ruler becomes religious, it [becomes] impossible for
you to debate with him. Once someone rules in the name of
religion, your lives become hell.
--Muammar Qaddafi (1942- )
Libyan leader [1970- ].
October 1989 remark to the General People's Congress [Tripoli].

The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the
power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the
difference on his own hide -- as, I think, he will. Until and unless
you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your
own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which
men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men.
Blood, whips, and guns -- or dollars. Take your choice -- there
is no other -- and your time is running out.
--Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
Russian-born American writer.
_Atlas Shrugged_ [1957], ch. 2 "The Aristocracy of Pull"

It is of the utmost importance that there should not
emerge in the Republic a single man...assembling
in his hands total power; who, when he has it, will
employ it in the destruction of any who refuse to
march under his banner.
--Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794)
French revolutionary.

I have always been fond of the West African
proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick;
you will go far.'
--Governor of New York Theodore Roosevelt [1899].
In G. Wallace Chessman
_Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Power_ [1969] p.70.

No, little rich boy, there is no third principle;
there is only money and poverty, and have and
lack, and right and left; there is only me against the
world! The world is not ideas, rich boy; the world
is no place for dreamers or their dreams; the world,
little Snotnose, is things. Things and their makers
rule the world. For things, the country is run. Not
for people. When you have things, there is time to
dream; when you don’t, you fight.
--Sir Salman Rushdie (1947- )
Indian-born British novelist.
_Midnight’s Children_

-

Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view
of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think
he is the Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he
is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar
delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language,
lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by
emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships.
--Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate.
_Power: A New Social Analysis_ [1938], ch. 16 "Power Philosophies"


Unfortunately, however, power is sweet, and the man who in the
beginning seeks power merely in order to have scope for his
benevolence is likely, before long, to love the power for its
own sake.
--Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate.
"Benevolence and Love of Power"
In _New York American_ [13 July 1934].

-

Seven months ago I could give a single command and
541,000 people would immediately obey it. Today I
can't get a plumber to come to my house.
--H. Norman Schwarzkopf, III (1934- )
American general who commanded the U.S. forces in the Gulf War of 1991.
In "Newsweek" [11 November 1991].

You Venetians, it is certain, are very wrong to
disturb the peace of other states rather than to rest
content with the most splendid state of Italy, which
you already possess. If you knew how you are
universally hated, your hair would stand on end ...
do you believe that these powers in Italy, now in
league together, are truly friends among themselves?
Of course they are not, it is only necessity, and the
fear which they feel of you and your power, that has
bound them in this way ... You are alone, with all
the world against you, not only in Italy but beyond
the Alps too. Know then that your enemies do not
sleep. Take good counsel, for, by God, you need
Galeazzo Sforza.
--Galeazzo Sforza (1444-1476)
Duke of Milan.
To Giovanni Gonnella, secretary of the Venetian republic.
In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.}
_History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 299.

You only have power over people as long as you
don't take *everything* away from them. But
when you've robbed a man of *everything* he's
no longer in your power - he's free again.
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918- )
Russian novelist.
_The First Circle_ [1968]

To the tune of the strong, the weak must dance.
--Nahman Syrkin (1868-1924)
Political theorist.
_Natzionale Freiheit_ [1917]

I think sometimes the Prime Minister should be intimidating. There's not
much point being a weak, floppy thing in the chair, is there?
--Margaret Thatcher (1925- )
British conservative stateswoman and Prime Minister [1979-1990].
On 'The Thatcher Years' (BBC I) [21 October 1993].

If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its
constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising
arrangements, corrupts even more.
--Barbara Tuchman {nèe Wertheim} (1912-1989)
American historian and author.
_Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45_ [1970]

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence;
it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous
servant and a fearful master.
--George Washington (1732-1799)
American general and commander-in-chief of the
colonial armies in the American Revolution [1775-1783]
and first president of the United States [1789-1797].

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every
assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong
to say that the Constitution was made to guard
the people against the dangers of good intentions.
There are men in all ages who mean to govern
well, but they mean to govern. They promise to
be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
--Daniel Webster (1782-1852)
American orator and politician.

Liberty never came from government. The history of
liberty is a history of resistance. The history of
liberty is a history of limitations of governmental
power, not the increase of it.
--Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
American Democratic statesman and President [1913-1921].
Speech in New York [9 September 1912].

-

Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil.
--anon.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power
attracts pathological personalities. It is not so
much that power corrupts but that it is magnetic
to the corruptable. Such people have a tendency
to become drunk on violence, a condition to which
they are quickly addicted.
--Missionaria Protectiva, Bene Gesserit
(Fictional group from Frank Herbert _Dune_)

---

TOPICAL

The Power of the Pentagon
By Max Boot
_The Wall Street Journal_ [17 May 2006]

Any book with a subtitle that refers to "The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power" bears a heavy burden of proof -- to show that the exercise of American power has indeed been a disaster. This would seem a difficult case to make, given that over the past six decades the U.S. has presided over an unprecedented expansion of free governments and free markets across the world, kept the peace in Europe and East Asia after centuries of disastrous conflicts, and defeated such monstrous regimes as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia and Baathist Iraq. The true disaster would have been if, as in 1914 and 1939, America had failed to exercise its power.

James Carroll does not bother to confront any of these obvious points in his lengthy diatribe against the "garrison state." An erstwhile Catholic priest turned moralistic writer (of novels, nonfiction books and a Boston Globe column), he simply assumes as his first principle that American power is indefensible and then unspools a long narrative of America's conduct since the 1940s to illustrate the point. His case should be familiar to anyone who has read anything by such far-left luminaries as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Jonathan Schell, or Seymour Hersh. It goes like this:

The bombing of German and Japanese cities, culminating with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a war crime akin to the Holocaust. Thus "America's mid-twentieth century initiation into world power was as much in the state of mortal sin as its birth in slavery had been." America continued sinning by building more atomic bombs and targeting them on the Soviet Union. Good ole Joe Stalin simply wanted to live and let live -- if only we had let him. "By portraying Stalin and his system as warmongering monsters," Mr. Carroll writes, early hard-liners like George Kennan and James Forrestal "helped push the Kremlin in that direction."

Mr. Carroll spends an inordinate amount of space on Forrestal's tortured psyche -- the first secretary of defense committed suicide in 1949 -- to suggest that anyone else who hated and feared communism must have been equally deranged. Richard Nixon, among many others, is portrayed as a warmongering nut job. Ronald Reagan, by contrast, was a warmongering simpleton whose role in the fall of the Berlin Wall was minimal. How original. Mr. Carroll bemoans "Reagan's childlike inability ever to have mastered the broken logic of nuclear deterrence" -- after having spent many pages claiming that deterrence was illogical and immoral.

A few themes emerge from this impassioned narrative. One is that America can do no right. Mr. Carroll has the gall to castigate President Gerald Ford for imposing "a punitive embargo" on Vietnam "in violation of America's obligations under the Paris Accords" -- without ever mentioning that the sanctions were a wan response to Hanoi's invasion of the south, a much bigger violation of the accords.

Another theme is that war, at least as waged by the U.S., is never justified. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait should have been "handled as a diplomatic crisis." The 9/11 attacks should have been addressed with "an internationally coordinated law enforcement effort."

A third theme is that the true heroes of the Cold War were not the soldiers, spies and statesmen who fought communist expansionism but antiwar activists -- like, well, Mr. Carroll -- who tried to impede their efforts. In a book full of too many offensive statements to count perhaps the most infuriating is Mr. Carroll's comparison of the nuclear-freeze movement in the West with the Solidarity movement in Poland. He actually labels nuclear-freeze organizer Randall Forsberg "an American Walesa" -- as if it were just as courageous to protest in Central Park as it was behind the Iron Curtain.

Such tortured logic pervades "House of War." Mr. Carroll wants to argue that in the post-1945 era "the Pentagon usurped controls over the levers of the American economy and culture, over science, academia, and politics." This is belied by two inconvenient realities. First, there is no "Pentagon viewpoint" -- different members of different military branches often have conflicting views, as Mr. Carroll notes on many occasions. Second, whatever the views inside the Pentagon, the major decisions about war have usually been made elsewhere. For instance, in the 1990s, senior generals opposed humanitarian interventions in places like Bosnia and Kosovo, but the Clinton administration acted anyway. Mr. Carroll blithely waves away this problem by proclaiming that "the arrival of 'human rights' as the latest justification for war represented another triumph for the Pentagon." Huh?

The most interesting parts of this dreary (if smoothly written) tirade concern the author's difficult relationship with his late father, an Air Force general who was the first director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the 1960s. Unfortunately, Mr. Carroll already told that story in a previous tome, "An American Requiem" (1996). Here he incessantly cites his parentage and his childhood visits to the Pentagon to lend unwarranted authority to antimilitary and anti-American pronouncements of the sort that undoubtedly drove his dad batty. "I have the eyes of a soldier's son, through which, unfortunately, I see everything," he writes with mock humility. (Note that "unfortunately" -- oh, what a curse omniscience is.) In reality he sees nothing beyond his own ideological blinders.

Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the forthcoming "War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today" (Gotham Books).

-----

aggrandize uh-GRAN-dyz; AG-ruhn-dyz, transitive verb:
1. To make great or greater; to enlarge; to increase.
2. To make great or greater in power, rank, reputation, or
wealth; -- applied to persons, countries, etc.
3. To make appear great or greater; to exalt.

diktat dik-TAHT, noun:
1. A harsh settlement unilaterally imposed on a defeated party.
2. An authoritative decree or order.
Ex.: And it would begin to encroach on another, more treasured,
freedom: the right of the networks to broadcast what they choose
independent of government diktat.
--"Back to the smoke-filled room?" _The Economist_ [25 February 1995]

fiat FEE-uht; -at; -aht; FY-uht; -at, noun:
1. An arbitrary or authoritative command or order.
2. Formal or official authorization or sanction.

hegemony (noun)
Control or dominating influence by one person or group, especially
by one political group over society or one nation over others

juggernaut (noun) ['jê-gêr-nat or -nawt]
An inexorable power or object that crushes whatever is in its way.

omnipotent (adj.)
Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force.
Synonyms: all-powerful, almighty

plenipotentiary (adj.) [ple-ni-pê-'ten-chi-e-ri or -'ten-chê-ri ]
Invested with full power to reach decisions.

potentate POH-tuhn-tayt, noun:
One who possesses great power or sway;
a ruler, sovereign, or monarch.

prepotency pree-POTE-n-see, noun:
The quality or condition of having superior power,
influence, or force; predominance.

puissant PWISS-uhnt; PYOO-uh-suhnt; pyoo-ISS-uhnt, adjective:
Powerful; strong; mighty; as, a puissant prince or empire.
Ex.: As an upcoming young corporate lawyer in San Francisco in the 1930's,
Crum tended the interests of some of California's most puissant businesses,
starting with William Randolph Hearst's newspaper empire.
--Richard Lingeman, "The Last Party," _New York Times_ [27 April 1997]

tycoon (noun)
An amasser of great wealth and power, especially in business


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